Knife attacker grins before cameras

Police search home of suspect in stabbing spree ‘Japan overconfident about its safety’

TOKYO, July 27, (Agencies): A Japanese man who admitted to murdering 19 people at a centre for the mentally disabled grinned to news cameras Wednesday before being questioned over the country’s worst killing spree in decades.

The 26-year-old reportedly said he wanted all disabled people to “disappear” after the knife rampage that left his victims in pools of blood, including some who were stabbed in the neck.

With a blue jacket draped over his head, Satoshi Uematsu was escorted out of a police station into a waiting van before a crowd of flashing news cameras.

Inside the vehicle with the jacket removed, he smiled broadly in footage broadcast on morning news shows.

An official at the Tsukui police station where Uematsu was held after the attack declined to comment on the investigation, only confirming that he was being transported to prosecutors for questioning.

Uematsu is accused of breaking into the Tsukui Yamayuri-en care centre in the forested hills of Sagamihara city, outside of Tokyo, in the early hours of Tuesday.

He reportedly tied up two caregivers before stabbing residents, leaving a total of 26 people injured, 13 of them severely.

He quickly turned himself in at a police station, carrying bloodied knives and admitting to officers: “I did it”.

He reportedly also said: “The disabled should all disappear.”

Security camera footage taken near the centre showed a vehicle arriving there shortly before the attack began. The driver opened the boot to remove objects, before walking toward the facility.

At around 2:50 am, shortly after an emergency call was made to police from the centre, the footage shows the driver dashing back to the vehicle, carrying a large bag in his right hand.

Uematsu left his job at the care home and was forcibly hospitalised in February after telling colleagues he intended to kill disabled people at the centre.

But he was discharged 12 days later when a doctor deemed he was not a threat.

He had previously delivered a letter to the Speaker of the lower House of parliament in which he threatened to kill hundreds of disabled people, outlining a broad plan for night-time attacks against Tsukui Yamayuri-en and another facility.

In the rambling letter he presented a vision of a society in which the seriously handicapped could be euthanised with the approval of family members TOKYO, July 27, (AP): The killing of 19 people at a home for the mentally disabled raised questions about whether Japan’s reputation as one of the safest countries in the world is creating a false sense of security.

The deadliest mass killing in Japan in the post-World War II era unfolded early Tuesday in Sagamihara, a city about 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of central Tokyo, when authorities say a former employee broke into the facility and stabbed more than 40 people before calmly turning himself in to police.

The suspect, identified as 26-year-old Satoshi Uematsu, had worked at the facility from 2014 until February, when he was let go. He wrote to Parliament outlining the bloody plan and saying all disabled should be put to death.

While not immune to violent crime, Japan has a relatively low homicide rate of well under one per 100,000 people. Mass killings usually are seen half a world away on the nightly news, although seven Japanese were among the dead in a recent hostage-taking in Bangladesh that targeted non-Muslims.

Because such massacres are rare, Japan has become overconfident about its safety, a Japanese

since “handicapped people only create unhappiness”.

The top-selling Yomiuri Shimbun daily called the case “appalling”, and urged a probe of the decision to release Uematsu from medical care.

“It is a matter of great regret for society to let such a serious stabbing incident happen,” it said in an editorial which called for increased security at care facilities.

Japan has one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the developed world and this week’s killing spree is believed to be the nation’s worst since 1938, when a man armed with an axe, sword and rifle went on a rampage that left 30 people dead.

A day after the mass murder of 19 people at a facility for the disabled, many shocked Japanese were questioning why the only suspect was discharged after just two weeks from a hospital to which he’d been forcibly committed under mental health laws.

Some are also wondering why the criminologist said.

For crime prevention, the country relies on its social system in which a group mentality sacrifices individual freedom for collective safety, said Nobuo Komiya, a criminology professor at Rissho University in Tokyo.

As a result, it has neglected risk management, he said.

“Japan has put an emphasis on not creating criminals, but it is reaching a breaking point,” Komiya said. “Like in foreign countries, I think institutions need to develop a plan in operational management and prepare for a worst-case scenario, given that criminals are inevitably born.”

Mass killings have happened in Japan from time to time. In 2001, a man with a history of mental illness killed eight children in a knife attack at an elementary school in Osaka. The attack prompted increased security measures for schools. In 2008, a man rammed a rented twoton truck into a crowd of shoppers at a busy Tokyo intersection, then jumped out and began stabbing people, killing seven.

Japan has very strict gun laws that might lessen violent crime, but they can’t stamp it out. TV news regularly reports on murders — a

suspect, who had written letters in February saying he would kill hundreds of handicapped people, was not kept under surveillance after he left hospital.

“Involuntary commitment is done forcefully by the authorities ... If the time period drags on longer than necessary, it becomes a serious violation of human rights,” Asahi newspaper said in an editorial on Tuesday.

“However, there were warning signs before the incident,” said the Asahi, one of Japan’s two biggest newspapers. “Was the treatment and monitoring of the man sufficient”?

Japanese police on Wednesday searched the home of Uematsu. Uematsu, was transferred earlier in the day from a local police station to the prosecutor’s office in Yokohama.

Kanagawa prefecture welfare department official Shogo Nakayama said that officials from the Sagamihara facility confronted him about the letter a few days later, and Uematsu quit. jilted lover, an adult son angry at his parents — and the most common weapon is a kitchen knife.

A Justice Ministry study in 2013 found that knives were used in slightly more than half the murder cases in a given year, with kitchen knives accounting for more than a third of all cases.

National Police Agency statistics show there have been fewer than 10 shooting deaths annually in Japan in recent years, a number that dropped to just one case in 2015.

The comfort level is high enough in Japan that it is common practice for first-grade students to go to and from school on their own, after parents accompany them for the first month or so, even in a major city such as Tokyo. Children are kidnapped from time to time.

Another factor contributing to Japan’s sense of safety, Komiya said, is the fact that the island country has never been invaded.

Tuesday’s attack prompted at least two major newspapers to publish “extra” editions that were handed out at train stations as details emerged. All 19 dead were among the approximately 150 residents or short-term residents at the Tsukui Yamayuri-en home for the mentally disabled.

His head and shoulders hidden with a blue jacket, the suspect was led out of a police station in Sagamihara on Wednesday morning and into the back of an unmarked white van with emergency lights on top. Photographers and video journalists swarmed the van as it pulled away.

At his house in Sagamihara police took in cardboard boxes to carry out any evidence. Parts of the property were sealed off with yellow police tape.

The parents of one of the seriously injured residents of the facility told Japanese television network NTV that their son is unconscious and on artificial respiration.

“I feel anger that he was a former worker,” the mother said of the attacker. NTV did not identify the parents or show their faces.

Further details of the attack, including whether the victims were asleep or otherwise helpless, remained unclear Wednesday.